


The Most Meaningful Gift

by Bookworm1063



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28316166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookworm1063/pseuds/Bookworm1063
Summary: When the students of Auradon Prep decide to do a White Elephant gift exchange for the holidays, Evie worries she won't be able to do something meaningful for her friends and girlfriend. Uma helps her plan something special.
Relationships: Evie/Mal (Disney), Gil/Harry Hook/Uma
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	The Most Meaningful Gift

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for @umaspirateship on Tumblr, as part of the Descendants gift exchange. Happy holidays!

Evie wasn’t sure why half the student body of Auradon Prep was in her dorm room. She did know it was Mal’s fault.

Ben, Carlos, Jay, and Lonnie were all sitting on Evie’s bed. Mal, Uma, Harry, and Gil were perched on Mal’s. Evie herself was in Mal’s desk chair (because Jane was sitting on Evie’s desk with her feet on Evie’s chair), and Audrey, Chad, and Doug were sprawled out on the rug.

“Okay,” Harry said. He was standing up now, still on Mal’s bed. “I’ve got an idea.”

The room fell silent.

“A White Elephant,” Harry said.

Ben raised his hand. “I don’t think we have… whatever that is in Auradon.”

“Come on, Ben,” Mal said. “You’re the king. You’re supposed to know about your citizen’s traditions! A White Elephant is where everyone buys a gag gift, and then we steal them from each other. Basically. Good old fashioned Isle fun.”

All the Isle kids in the room nodded. Ben looked unconvinced.

“Well, I’m in,” Audrey said. “It’s this or waste time buying everyone individual gifts.”

“We could just do, you know, a normal, randomly selected gift exchange,” Ben said. “It doesn’t have to be mean.”

“Oh my god, Ben, you’re so innocent,” Jay said. “All in favor of a White Elephant, say aye, or whatever.”

“Aye,” Harry said immediately. The rest of the room followed suit.

Evie said nothing. A White Elephant was good fun—she’d participated in one or two back on the Isle—but this year was different. This year, she was allowed to tell her friends how much they meant to her. This year, she was Mal’s girlfriend.

She wanted to do something meaningful for the occasion. A White Elephant was a lot of things, but meaningful wasn’t really one of them. 

Uma knocked on the door to Mal and Evie’s room just after midnight. No one answered.

Uma tried the knob. It was locked, so she knocked again.

The door opened this time. Evie was wearing her pajamas under a floor-length purple robe with a dragon heart design on the front.

“Borrowing your girlfriend’s clothes?” Uma asked.

Evie blushed and stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind her. “What do you need, Uma? It’s after midnight.”

“I noticed,” Uma said. “I saw the look on your face today, when everyone decided on the White Elephant. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Evie said. “I guess I was hoping to do something a little more meaningful this year, is all. It’s not a big deal.”

“No, it is,” Uma said. “I wanted to do the same thing.”

Evie blinked down at her. “Really?”

“Yes, Princess. I have people I care about, too. Two idiot boyfriends, for starters.”

“You’re right,” Evie said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I was wondering if you might be interested in helping me out with an idea I had.”

“That depends on the idea,” Evie said cautiously.

Ten minutes later, Uma had a partner in crime.

Evie had always thought that one of the best things about Auradon was how you could actually buy things. Nothing was someone’s castoff, sent over on a barge and left for people to fight over. Everything was brand new.

The shops along Main Street were some of Evie’s favorite places to spend time. She thought most of her allowance and profits from dress sales got funneled into the fabric store there.

“Let’s start in here,” Mal said. She took Evie’s hand and dragged her into a small shop on the corner of Main Street. Inside, it was dark and cluttered with shelves and racks, all full of random objects. Evie spotted mugs, snow globes, keychains, jewelry, scarves, bottles full of sand and shells, even some hermit crabs, scuttling around in a tank.

“Wow,” Evie said. She reached out and trailed her fingers along a rack of scarves, letting the fabric drift across her fingers. “These are really nice.”

“It’s a White Elephant, Evie,” Mal said. “You’re not supposed to pick nice presents.” Mal leaned in and kissed Evie on the cheek.

“I know.” Evie waited until Mal had gone down the next aisle to look at bracelets, then selected a navy-blue scarf for herself.

She wandered down the aisles of stuff until she found a gift for the White Elephant. Tucked away on a back shelf and tagged with clearance stickers, Evie spotted a couple of snow globes featuring the Isle of the Lost, filled with black and purple glitter swirling in clear liquid. The base had half-inch-high letters spelling out _I Survived the Isle_ on them.

It wasn’t really a gag gift, but Evie grabbed one anyway.

Evie also picked out a few other things, including a set of shot glasses with the symbols of different kingdoms on them, a horrifically ugly glass vase, and a bright tie-dye pattered blanket. She set everything down on the counter.

“Last minute Solstice shopping?” the man behind the register asked as he rang her up.

“Something like that,” Evie said. 

Uma hadn’t been back to the Isle in a few months, and she was surprised to see how much it had changed. There were fewer kids alone on the streets, the houses and yards were cleaner and neater, and the stores were stocked with actual goods, not just whatever the shopkeepers had been able to snag from the barges of leftovers. 

Evie was already waiting at the old hideout when Uma arrived. Both of them had their arms laden with shopping bags.

“Hi.” Evie had the plastic handles of her bags over her arms, so her hands were free. She was holding a rock.

Uma nodded to it. “Are you planning to stone me to death?”

Evie grinned and tossed the rock at the sign hanging overhead, opening the hideout’s entrance.

“After you, sea witch.”

“Why, thank you, princess.”

Everyone was sitting in a circle around the rug in Mal and Evie’s room. There was a pile of presents in the center. Next to Evie, Mal was ripping up a sheet of paper and writing numbers on the scraps.

“Does anyone have a hat?” Mal asked. “Or a bowl, or something?”

Uma sighed and took off her pirate hat. “If something happens to this, I end you,” she said, passing it across to Mal.

“No promises.” Mal dumped the paper scraps into the hat and handed it to Evie.

Jay had ended up with Evie’s snow globe, and he thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. It occupied a place of honor on his desk.

Evie had found herself with a mug that said _No Place Like the Isle for the Holidays_ , featuring a Maleficent graphic not unlike the ones Mal used to tag buildings on the Isle with. She’d already switched out the pencil cup on her nightstand.

Evie and Uma hung back after most of the Auradon kids had left.

“So,” Uma said. “You five.”

Carlos, Jay, Mal, Harry, and Gil all turned to look at her. Uma smiled.

“Anyone interested in a field trip?”

The marketplace on the Isle of the Lost was crowded with former villains, even the day before Solstice. Harry tipped his head back and took a deep breath.

“Smells like the sea,” he said. Uma didn’t respond, but she took his hand on her left, and Gil’s on her right.

“Remember when we used to come here?” she asked. “Every day, right after Solstice? When all the good stuff would show up on the barges.”

Harry nodded.

“Evie and I thought we’d set something up,” Uma said. “There are clues hidden all around the marketplace. We’ve got something planned somewhere else. Meet us there.” Uma squeezed her boyfriends’ hands, then stepped away. Evie put an arm over her shoulder as their friends and partners disappeared into the market.

“Do you think they’ll figure it out?” Evie asked.

“Sure,” Uma said. “They’re not idiots; they’re just stupid sometimes.”

“Carlos isn’t,” Evie said. “But you’re right. This will probably take them a few hours. Let’s go. I want to make sure the food doesn’t get cold.”

Uma and Evie climbed the stairs to the hideout. They’d already set the table a few days before, and the food was packed into borrowed cooler cases along the walls. The Isle still had spotty electricity, so Evie had been forced to steal Bunsen burners from the lab at school to heat the food.

Evie didn’t let Uma anywhere near the burners. She didn’t trust her friend not to burn the place down. She heated plates of Auradon leftovers they’d smuggled from the kitchens at school—a pasta dish, steak, tomato soup—over the flame, and Uma set it all out on the table with extra bread rolls and a slightly wilted salad. Evie placed a few scraggly wildflowers she’d picked on the way to the hideout in the ugly glass vase in the middle of the table.

The door creaked open, and Harry, Gil, Carlos, Jay, and Mal slipped inside.

Picking over the leftovers at the market had been Uma’s tradition, but a feast of Auradon leftovers was Evie’s, and she could see the realization on Carlos, Jay, and Mal’s faces.

“Evie,” Mal said. She crossed the room, wrapped her arms around Evie’s waist, picked her up, and spun her in a circle. Evie laughed helplessly, clinging on to Mal’s hair.

“I love you,” Mal said, setting Evie back down on the floor. “Thank you.”

“Uma helped, you know,” Evie said.

“I’m not thanking Uma like this,” Mal said, and she tilted her head up to kiss Evie.

“Kiss later,” Jay complained. “Let’s eat!”

Everyone gathered around the table. Uma yanked the lids off all the containers and piled them up on an extra chair. Evie filled her plate with pasta and bread, and Jay threw pieces of tomato from the salad at Carlos. Mal had her feet up on the edge of the table. Harry was pressed up against Gil on one side and Uma on the other; Evie wasn’t sure how he had room to move his arms and eat, but he was managing.

Evie looked around the room, at how everyone was smiling and laughing and happy. She met Uma’s eye across the table, and Uma winked.

“Thanks for helping me pull this off,” Evie said.

“No problem,” Uma said. “I was worried about the same thing you were. I didn’t just help you out of the goodness of my heart, you know.”

“Then I guess we both got what we wanted for them,” Evie said.

“Yeah,” Uma said. “I guess we did.”


End file.
